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"Tina Turner One Last Time Live!": The official title...

December 04, 2000|By Steve Johnson, Tribune Television Critic.

"Tina Turner One Last Time Live!": The official title includes the corporate sponsorship, "Target Presents," but in this hour-long concert special (9 p.m., WBBM-Ch. 2) the discount store doesn't make Ms. T wear anything with a logo.

A chronicle of the greatest-hits presentation Turner is billing as her last concert tour (we'll see), it is a potent thing, especially given television's tendency to render live music about 70 percent less visceral.

Given Turner's most recent music, you might expect her concerts to have turned toward saccharine overproduction, something more like the recent CBS Faith Hill special than the raw energy of Turner's early career.

And given her age and generation, you might also expect this to be one of those dreadful, medley-heavy self-homages legendary singers seem to consider mandatory.

Not a chance. The approximately 97 people and gargantuan set on the stage at London's Wembley Stadium are bad omens, but this is, at heart, a raunchy R&B show, featuring a band that likes it, "Proud Mary"-style, nice and rough.

Not so much a singer as a belter, Turner performs everything, even her tamer recent hits, with that sing-or-die abandon that captures the true spirit of rock 'n' roll. It's a little reminiscent of the way that Target captures the true spirit of discount-store merchandising.